September 28, 1999 13:46
UK DSL Services Coming Soon - But Can You Afford Them?
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND, 1999 SEP 28 (NB) -- By Sylvia Dennis, Newsbytes. UUNet, the MCI WorldCom [NASDAQ:WCOM] parented Internet service provider (ISP), has outlined plans to be one of the first in the UK to offer DSL (digital subscriber line) services to its subscribers.
The plan is for the company to value-add its Internet service to British Telecom's (BT's) much publicized ADSL (asynchronous DSL) service, which is expected to become commercially available during November.
The UK division of America Online Europe is the only other ISP that has committed to being among the first wave of UK ISPs to offer the BT ADSL offering.
However, UUNet has voiced concerns about being worried that BT's wholesale pricing to ISPs may inhibit end user sales of the service.
So far, BT has only officially confirmed that business users of ADSL will pay around 200 pounds ($320) a month for their service, with always-on speeds of around 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps) to 2Mbps.
Earlier reports that BT is planning on offering a consumer version of ADSL using a dial-on-demand service, working at 384,000 bps downstream and 128,000 bps upstream have yet to be confirmed.
Pricing on the consumer service was reported to be around 40 pounds ($64) a month on a wholesale basis from BT to the ISP. However, despite rumors, no exact pricing on the consumer ADSL service has been formally announced by BT to the industry.
It's against this backdrop that UUNet has voiced its worries that the eventual end user price of ADSL may make it too expensive for a mass market.
UUNet has good reason to voice such worries. The ISP has already been involved with technology trials with BT, and now has the option, it says, to trial two variants of a DSL service - IPStream and DataStream.
IPStream, the carrier says, is a DSL service entirely managed and controlled by BT and delivered in such a way that there is little opportunity for variation of the service.
DataStream, meanwhile, is delivered differently, which gives the service provider greater independence, and therefore, allow it to offer additional value-added services.
In effect, UUNet says, DataStream is the only variant which will allow competitors to fully differentiate their services from one another, and so create genuine competition within the UK market for DSL.
Based on information received from BT to date, UUNet says it appears that BT's, charges for purchasing the Datastream product are priced so that it will be prohibitively expensive for anyone to offer a competitive service.
UUNet says that, in looking at the criteria set down by BT, competitors will have to buy (from BT) lines costing around 25,000 pounds ($40,000) into each of the 400-plus local exchanges across England, Wales, and Scotland..
This means, the ISP says, a minimum investment of more than 10 million pounds ($16 million) to introduce a nationwide service, making it extremely difficult for UUNet to offer the cost-effective alternative service that it wants to provide to customers.
Richard Heyes, UUNet's managing director of UK operations, said that, in effect, it seems the only viable option non-BT participants in the DSL trials have is to buy and resell a wholly BT product.
This means, he said, that BT ends up controlling the specification of the customer premises equipment and the level of service.
As a result of this, Heyes said that UUNet is currently pressing BT to confirm our interpretation of the charging structure they are imposing, as well as stating its intention to lodge a formal complaint with Oftel, the government telecommunications regulator, if the ISP's fears prove to be correct.
"It's vital that access is priced fairly if we are to unlock the benefits of commerce for smaller enterprises and consumers and drive the e-conomy forward. In fact, heavy-handed control of the market runs utterly against the wishes of the government to make Britain a world class platform for the Internet e-conomy," he said.
UUNet says it began technology testing of UK DSL services three months ago. Cities likely to see these services first include, London, Birmingham, Cambridge, Cardiff, Coventry, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, and Newcastle.
Despite the problems, the ISP says that it sees huge potential for a DSL service for small to medium-sized enterprises which increasingly need Internet connections to compete in national and international markets.
UUNet's Web site is at uk.uu.net .
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And from FT's website:
francetelecom.fr
Internet for entreprises: France Telecom doubles capacity of Ol‚ane's international network
Paris, September 22, 1999
Ol‚ane's comprehensive range of Internet services for businesses has won a growing number of corporate customers in 1999. As a result, traffic volume on the Ol‚ane network has doubled since 1998. To accommodate accelerating demand and anticipate future needs, France Telecom is carrying out major construction work to expand Ol‚ane's infrastructure.
The new links will ensure that Ol‚ane's demanding customers continue to benefit from best-in-class Internet service and prepare the network for the exponential rise in traffic as ADSL is progressively rolled out in France.
Ol‚ane network capacity to double
In light of the steady rise in Internet traffic on Ol‚ane's network, France Telecom is doubling the capacity on international links to deliver optimum connection efficiency. Extension work began in September 1999 and will be completed in October.
Greater capacity is already available on links to the Open Transit backbone (operated by France Telecom Worldwide Networks and Services), the ATM MAE (MERIT Access Exchange) in Washington, and LINX, the London Internet Exchange.
Connection capacity with the France Telecom Worldwide Networks and Services backbone will be further boosted between now and the end of the year with the addition of two more links, one between the Ol‚ane network and the AMS-IX exchange in Amsterdam, and one to the MAE-FFT in Frankfurt.
Maps of Ol‚ane's international and domestic networks are available on the following websites:
www.oleane.net
www.data.francetelecom.fr
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